> Back in 2009, James Strachan (the creator of Groovy) stated that if he'd known about Scala first he probably wouldn't have built Groovy [1].
I wish people would stop quoting this as if it is some kind of damning evidence against Groovy as a language. It is sad because I often want to say generous things about frameworks and tools that are competitors to ones I am involved in, but then I remember how ruthlessly and persistently people exploit this line (almost guaranteed to get quoted in every Scala discussion if someone mentions Groovy) and I realise that in the real world you can pay a lot for being generous at the wrong time.
Very True. I'm pretty sure that quote wasn't meant to be a critique of the Groovy language, just an expression of interest in Scala. Yet its brought out every time somebody wants to dismiss Groovy.
Compare that quote to this[1] presentation where Paul Phillips lays in to scala for 50 minutes. Even when somebody does criticize their own creation I doubt they mean "Hey everybody, that thing I spent a bunch of time on? Throw it all in the garbage, its pointless".
I wish people would stop quoting this as if it is some kind of damning evidence against Groovy as a language. It is sad because I often want to say generous things about frameworks and tools that are competitors to ones I am involved in, but then I remember how ruthlessly and persistently people exploit this line (almost guaranteed to get quoted in every Scala discussion if someone mentions Groovy) and I realise that in the real world you can pay a lot for being generous at the wrong time.